Patents

Close to the hills of Apple’s patent win againsts HTC (Android) ( about which I blogged yesterday), now Microsoft scored a patent victory against Motorola Mobility which is now part of Google. As per ITC Judge’s ruling , Motorola violates four claims in patent number 6,370,566 related to meeting requests and group scheduling. In such event, one has to either backout products violating the patents or pay technology license fees. Microsoft does enter into such agreements however it is interesting to see what would Google do. May be work around the solution?

Kent Walker, Google’s General Counsel, announced today that Google is bidding for Nortel’s patent portfolio at $900million. It is a starting point in the bidding process. Nortel has many patents in Networking as well as mobile devices which makes this important bid for Google which off late is subjected to many litigations, one of which is from Oracle about Java usage in Android.

In this blog post, Google counsel emphasised that Google requests for a reform of the patents law. He repeated Google’s stand that huge number of low quality patents particularly paper patents and hindrance to the real innovations. He might also be targeting Paul Allen’s patent law suite earlier last year. His patent portfolio covers some of the basics of all Social Networking media. Anyway, though patents are not important in a success of a company but they are important for the defense of the company. Recently I went through yet another cycle of IP filing. It is a long process and filing is just a beginning. Patents process takes at least few years to reward patents, that too after some rejections and questions. For startups, this few years period means eternity. So, they are not useful as a defense and, if the startup is not successful, it may not have enough resources to enforce the patent by filing lawsuits. Further, it is very costly and difficult for individual inventors whom, in my opinion, the patent law should offer some incentives and protections. Of course, when Google is demanding for a reform, I am sure it is not representing views of small startups or individual innovators. so expectation for IP reform may vary depends on whom you talk to.